Sunday, June 19, 2016

MYSTICISM AND LOGIC from " MYSTICISM AND LOGIC AND OTHER ESSAYS " by BERTRAND RUSSELL

Bertrand Arthur William Russell - 1872 – 1970

Bertrand Arthur William Russell - 18 May 1872 –
1970 was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian,
writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate. At various
points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a
pacifist, but he also admitted that he had "never been any of these
things, in any profound sense". He was born in Monmouthshire into one of
the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom.

In the early 20th century, Russell led the British
"revolt against idealism". He is considered one of the founders of
analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague
G. E. Moore, and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to
be one of the 20th century's premier logicians. With A. N. Whitehead he
wrote Principia Mathematica, an attempt to create a logical basis for
mathematics. His philosophical essay "On Denoting" has been considered a
"paradigm of philosophy". His work has had a considerable influence on
logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence,
cognitive science, computer science (see type theory and type system),
and philosophy, especially the philosophy of language, epistemology, and
metaphysics.

Russell was a prominent anti-war activist; he
championed anti-imperialism and went to prison for his pacifism during
World War I. Later, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler, then criticised
Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the involvement of the United States
in the Vietnam War, and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear
disarmament. In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
"in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he
champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought"

MYSTICISM AND LOGIC

Metaphysics, or the attempt to conceive the world as a
whole by means of thought, has been developed, from the first, by the
union and conflict of two very different human impulses, the one urging
men towards mysticism, the other urging them towards science. Some men
have achieved greatness through one of these impulses alone, others
through the other alone: in Hume, for example, the scientific impulse
reigns quite unchecked, while in Blake a strong hostility to science
co-exists with profound mystic insight. But the greatest men who have
been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism:
the attempt to harmonise the two was what made their life, and what
always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some
minds, a greater thing than either science or religion.

Before attempting an explicit characterisation of the
scientific and the mystical impulses, I will illustrate them by examples
from two philosophers whose greatness lies in the very intimate
blending which they achieved. The two philosophers I mean are Heraclitus
and Plato.

Heraclitus, as every one knows, was a believer in universal flux: time
builds and destroys all things. From the few fragments that remain, it
is not easy to discover how he arrived at his opinions, but there are
some sayings that strongly suggest scientific observation as the source.

"The things that can be seen, heard, and learned," he
says, "are what I prize the most." This is the language of the
empiricist, to whom observation is the sole guarantee of truth. "The sun
is new every day," is another fragment; and this opinion, in spite of
its paradoxical character, is obviously inspired by scientific
reflection, and no doubt seemed to him to obviate the difficulty of
understanding how the sun can work its way underground from west to east
during the night. Actual observation must also have suggested to him
his central doctrine, that Fire is the one permanent substance, of which
all visible things are passing phases. In combustion we see things
change utterly, while their flame and heat rise up into the air and
vanish.

"This world, which is the same for all," he says, "no
one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be,
an ever-living Fire, with measures kindling, and measures going out."

"The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea is earth, half whirlwind."

This theory, though no longer one which science can accept, is
nevertheless scientific in spirit. Science, too, might have inspired the
famous saying to which Plato alludes: "You cannot step twice into the
same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you." But we find
also another statement among the extant fragments: "We step and do not
step into the same rivers; we are and are not."

The comparison of this statement, which is mystical,
with the one quoted by Plato, which is scientific, shows how intimately
the two tendencies are blended in the system of Heraclitus. Mysticism
is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of
feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe; and this kind
of feeling leads Heraclitus, on the basis of his science, to strangely
poignant sayings concerning life and the world, such as:

"Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's."

It is poetic imagination, not science, which presents
Time as despotic lord of the world, with all the irresponsible frivolity
of a child. It is mysticism, too, which leads Heraclitus to assert the
identity of opposites: "Good and ill are one," he says; and again: "To
God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things
wrong and some right."

Much of mysticism underlies the ethics of Heraclitus. It is true that a
scientific determinism alone might have inspired the statement: "Man's
character is his fate"; but only a mystic would have said:

"Every beast is driven to the pasture with blows"; and again:

"It is hard to fight with one's heart's desire. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul"; and again:

"Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things."

Examples might be multiplied, but those that have been given are enough
to show the character of the man: the facts of science, as they appeared
to him, fed the flame in his soul, and in its light he saw into the
depths of the world by the reflection of his own dancing swiftly
penetrating fire. In such a nature we see the true union of the mystic
and the man of science, the highest eminence, as I think, that it is
possible to achieve in the world of thought.

In Plato, the same twofold impulse exists, though the
mystic impulse is distinctly the stronger of the two, and secures
ultimate victory whenever the conflict is sharp. His description of the
cave is the classical statement of belief in a knowledge and reality
truer and more real than that of the senses:

"Imagine a number of men living in an underground cavernous chamber,
with an entrance open to the light, extending along the entire length of
the cavern, in which they have been confined, from their childhood,
with their legs and necks so shackled that they are obliged to sit still
and look straight forwards, because their chains render it impossible
for them to turn their heads round: and imagine a bright fire burning
some way off, above and behind them, and an elevated roadway passing
between the fire and the prisoners, with a low wall built along it, like
the screens which conjurors put up in front of their audience, and
above which they exhibit their wonders.

I have it, he replied.

Also figure to yourself a number of persons walking behind this wall,
and carrying with them statues of men, and images of other animals,
wrought in wood and stone and all kinds of materials, together with
various other articles, which overtop the wall; and, as you might
expect, let some of the passers by be talking, and others silent.

You are describing a strange scene, and strange prisoners.

They resemble us, I replied.

Now consider what would happen if the course of nature
brought them a release from their fetters, and a remedy for their
foolishness, in the following manner. Let us suppose that one of them
has been released, and compelled suddenly to stand up, and turn his neck
round and walk with open eyes towards the light; and let us suppose
that he goes through all these actions with pain, and that the dazzling
splendour renders him incapable of discerning those objects of which he
used formerly to see the shadows. What answer should you expect him to
make, if some one were to tell him that in those days he was watching
foolish phantoms, but that now he is somewhat nearer to reality, and is
turned towards things more real, and sees more correctly; above all, if
he were to point out to him the several objects that are passing by, and
question him, and compel him to answer what they are? Should you not
expect him to be puzzled, and to regard his old visions as truer than
the objects now forced upon his notice?

Yes, much truer....

Hence, I suppose, habit will be necessary to enable
him to perceive objects in that upper world. At first he will be most
successful in distinguishing shadows; then he will discern the
reflections of men and other things in water, and afterwards the
realities; and after this he will raise his eyes to encounter the light
of the moon and stars, finding it less difficult to study the heavenly
bodies and the heaven itself by night, than the sun and the sun's light
by day.

Doubtless.

Last of all, I imagine, he will be able to observe and contemplate the
nature of the sun, not as it appears in water or on alien ground, but as
it is in itself in its own territory.

Of course.

His next step will be to draw the conclusion, that the
sun is the author of the seasons and the years, and the guardian of all
things in the visible world, and in a manner the cause of all those
things which he and his companions used to see.

Obviously, this will be his next step....

Now this imaginary case, my dear Glancon, you must
apply in all its parts to our former statements, by comparing the region
which the eye reveals to the prison house, and the light of the fire
therein to the power of the sun: and if, by the upward ascent and the
contemplation of the upper world, you understand the mounting of the
soul into the intellectual region, you will hit the tendency of my own
surmises, since you desire to be told what they are; though, indeed, God
only knows whether they are correct. But, be that as it may, the view
which I take of the subject is to the following effect. In the world of
knowledge, the essential Form of Good is the limit of our enquiries, and
can barely be perceived; but, when perceived, we cannot help concluding
that it is in every case the source of all that is bright and
beautiful, in the visible world giving birth to light and its master,
and in the intellectual world dispensing, immediately and with full
authority, truth and reason; and that whosoever would act wisely, either
in private or in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes."

But in this passage, as throughout most of Plato's
teaching, there is an identification of the good with the truly real,
which became embodied in the philosophical tradition, and is still
largely operative in our own day. In thus allowing a legislative
function to the good, Plato produced a divorce between philosophy and
science, from which, in my opinion, both have suffered ever since and
are still suffering. The man of science, whatever his hopes may be, must
lay them aside while he studies nature; and the philosopher, if he is
to achieve truth, must do the same. Ethical considerations can only
legitimately appear when the truth has been ascertained: they can and
should appear as determining our feeling towards the truth, and our
manner of ordering our lives in view of the truth, but not as themselves
dictating what the truth is to be.

There are passages in Plato among those which illustrate the scientific
side of his mind - where he seems clearly aware of this. The most
noteworthy is the one in which Socrates, as a young man, is explaining
the theory of ideas to Parmenides.

After Socrates has explained that there is an idea of
the good, but not of such things as hair and mud and dirt, Parmenides
advises him "not to despise even the meanest things," and this advice
shows the genuine scientific temper. It is with this impartial temper
that the mystic's apparent insight into a higher reality and a hidden
good has to be combined if philosophy is to realise its greatest
possibilities. And it is failure in this respect that has made so much
of idealistic philosophy thin, lifeless, and insubstantial. It is only
in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit: divorced from
it, they remain barren. But marriage with the world is not to be
achieved by an ideal which shrinks from fact, or demands in advance that
the world shall conform to its desires.

Parmenides himself is the source of a peculiarly
interesting strain of mysticism which pervades Plato's thought - the
mysticism which may be called "logical" because it is embodied in
theories on logic. This form of mysticism, which appears, so far as the
West is concerned, to have originated with Parmenides, dominates the
reasonings of all the great mystical metaphysicians from his day to that
of Hegel and his modern disciples. Reality, he says, is uncreated,
indestructible, unchanging, indivisible; it is "immovable in the bonds
of mighty chains, without beginning and without end; since coming into
being and passing away have been driven afar, and true belief has cast
them away." The fundamental principle of his inquiry is stated in a
sentence which would not be out of place in Hegel: "Thou canst not know
what is not - that is impossible - nor utter it; for it is the same
thing that can be thought and that can be." And again: "It needs must be
that what can be thought and spoken of is; for it is possible for it to
be, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be." The
impossibility of change follows from this principle; for what is past
can be spoken of, and therefore, by the principle, still is.

Mystical philosophy, in all ages and in all parts of
the world, is characterised by certain beliefs which are illustrated by
the doctrines we have been considering.

There is, first, the belief in insight as against
discursive analytic knowledge: the belief in a way of wisdom, sudden,
penetrating, coercive, which is contrasted with the slow and fallible
study of outward appearance by a science relying wholly upon the senses.
All who are capable of absorption in an inward passion must have
experienced at times the strange feeling of unreality in common objects,
the loss of contact with daily things, in which the solidity of the
outer world is lost, and the soul seems, in utter loneliness, to bring
forth, out of its own depths, the mad dance of fantastic phantoms which
have hitherto appeared as independently real and living. This is the
negative side of the mystic's initiation: the doubt concerning common
knowledge, preparing the way for the reception of what seems a higher
wisdom. Many men to whom this negative experience is familiar do not
pass beyond it, but for the mystic it is merely the gateway to an ampler
world.

The mystic insight begins with the sense of a mystery
unveiled, of a hidden wisdom now suddenly become certain beyond the
possibility of a doubt. The sense of certainty and revelation comes
earlier than any definite belief. The definite beliefs at which mystics
arrive are the result of reflection upon the inarticulate experience
gained in the moment of insight. Often, beliefs which have no real
connection with this moment become subsequently attracted into the
central nucleus; thus in addition to the convictions which all mystics
share, we find, in many of them, other convictions of a more local and
temporary character, which no doubt become amalgamated with what was
essentially mystical in virtue of their subjective certainty. We may
ignore such inessential accretions, and confine ourselves to the beliefs
which all mystics share.

The first and most direct outcome of the moment of
illumination is belief in the possibility of a way of knowledge which
may be called revelation or insight or intuition, as contrasted with
sense, reason, and analysis, which are regarded as blind guides leading
to the morass of illusion. Closely connected with this belief is the
conception of a Reality behind the world of appearance and utterly
different from it. This Reality is regarded with an admiration often
amounting to worship; it is felt to be always and everywhere close at
hand, thinly veiled by the shows of sense, ready, for the receptive
mind, to shine in its glory even through the apparent folly and
wickedness of Man. The poet, the artist, and the lover are seekers after
that glory: the haunting beauty that they pursue is the faint
reflection of its sun. But the mystic lives in the full light of the
vision: what others dimly seek he knows, with a knowledge beside which
all other knowledge is ignorance.

The second characteristic of mysticism is its belief
in unity, and its refusal to admit opposition or division anywhere. We
found Heraclitus saying "good and ill are one"; and again he says, "the
way up and the way down is one and the same." The same attitude appears
in the simultaneous assertion of contradictory propositions, such as:
"We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not." The
assertion of Parmenides, that reality is one and indivisible, comes from
the same impulse towards unity. In Plato, this impulse is less
prominent, being held in check by his theory of ideas; but it reappears,
so far as his logic permits, in the doctrine of the primacy of the
Good.

A third mark of almost all mystical metaphysics is the
denial of the reality of Time. This is an outcome of the denial of
division; if all is one, the distinction of past and future must be
illusory. We have seen this doctrine prominent in Parmenides; and among
moderns it is fundamental in the systems of Spinoza and Hegel.

The last of the doctrines of mysticism which we have
to consider is its belief that all evil is mere appearance, an illusion
produced by the divisions and oppositions of the analytic intellect.
Mysticism does not maintain that such things as cruelty, for example,
are good, but it denies that they are real: they belong to that lower
[11]world of phantoms from which we are to be liberated by the insight
of the vision. Sometimes—for example in Hegel, and at least verbally in
Spinoza—not only evil, but good also, is regarded as illusory, though
nevertheless the emotional attitude towards what is held to be Reality
is such as would naturally be associated with the belief that Reality is
good. What is, in all cases, ethically characteristic of mysticism is
absence of indignation or protest, acceptance with joy, disbelief in the
ultimate truth of the division into two hostile camps, the good and the
bad. This attitude is a direct outcome of the nature of the mystical
experience: with its sense of unity is associated a feeling of infinite
peace. Indeed it may be suspected that the feeling of peace produces, as
feelings do in dreams, the whole system of associated beliefs which
make up the body of mystic doctrine. But this is a difficult question,
and one on which it cannot be hoped that mankind will reach agreement.

Four questions thus arise in considering the truth or falsehood of mysticism, namely:

I. Are there two ways of knowing, which may be called respectively
reason and intuition? And if so, is either to be preferred to the other?

II. Is all plurality and division illusory?

III. Is time unreal?

IV. What kind of reality belongs to good and evil?

On all four of these questions, while fully developed
mysticism seems to me mistaken, I yet believe that, by sufficient
restraint, there is an element of wisdom to be learned from the mystical
way of feeling, which does not seem to be attainable in any other
manner. If this is the truth, mysticism is to be commended as an
attitude towards life, not as a creed about the world. The meta-physical
creed, I shall maintain, is a mistaken outcome of the emotion, although
this emotion, as colouring and informing all other thoughts and
feelings, is the inspirer of whatever is best in Man. Even the cautious
and patient investigation of truth by science, which seems the very
antithesis of the mystic's swift certainty, may be fostered and
nourished by that very spirit of reverence in which mysticism lives and
moves.